Investigating the digital world

Making Sense of Digital Forensic International Standards

Written by DFM Team

Making Sense of Digital Forensic International Standards

The processes of International Standards negotiation can appear protracted, messy, and unnecessarily complex. The result of these processes is a labyrinth of numbered and named documents that again often boggle the imagination when a practitioner wishes to access the knowledge. The set of ISO/IEC Digital Forensic Standards published to date are probably easier to follow because there are few, but when the related Standards in security, incident response, cryptography, and so on are factored in the potential user must ask, where do I start? A cluster of other questions also arise relating to the cost of standard adoption, the necessary skills to manage the adoption, the audit or accreditation requirements, the time limit on any Standard, and the adequacy of any one or cluster of Standards to address the pressing issues. The general answer to the problem Bryan Cusack shows us how to decide on which are the most useful Digital Forensic International Standards to implement. area is to hire a consultancy and one who can be trusted. Nevertheless, even consultants have challenges when faced with a particular industry context and the available Standards. The consultant solution is either to promote a single certifiable Standard or to advocate the adoption of a general control framework such as COBIT 5, ITIL, or an industry sector specific one such as PCI. These pragmatic solutions manage risk in context for the generation of the best general organizational performance. However, further specific risk management advantage can be gained by the skilful selection and adoption of Standards in niche areas such as governance and digital forensics.

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